Frank commentary from an unretired call girl

Deborah Jeane Palfrey

If taken into custody, my physical safety and most probably my very life would be jeopardized…rape, beating, maiming, disfigurement and more than likely murder disguised in the form of just another jailhouse accident or suicide would await me. – Deborah Jeane Palfrey

Four years ago yesterday, Deborah Jeane Palfrey was found hanged in a shed behind her mother’s home in Tarpon Springs, Florida, the victim of government persecution that literally drove her to her grave. I’ve been asked if I knew her, and I regret to say that I did not because I’ve been told by those who did that she was a kind, sweet, wonderful person whose philosophy of running an escort service was the same as mine: treat one’s girls fairly and honestly, as one would like to be treated oneself, and extend the same courtesy to one’s clients. Indeed, her only important ethical breach is the one forced upon all whores by criminalization: in order to protect ourselves, our associates and our property we must deny what we are, and officially cloak our legitimate and socially-vital profession under ridiculous disclaimers about “time and companionship”; escort services (including mine) must even require subcontractors to sign documents stating that they agree not to have sex with clients, even though we’d have to let them go if clients repeatedly complained that they obeyed such contracts. As I discovered in my own (insignificant in comparison to Deborah’s) experience with the injustice system, we are forced to commit felonies such as fraud and perjury in order to escape tyrannical persecution for running a business that is neither wrongful nor fraudulent.

Deborah was born in Charleroi, Pennsylvania on March 18, 1956, the daughter of Frank and Blanche Palfrey. Mercifully, Frank Palfrey died in 2002 and so was not forced to endure his daughter’s lynching by his government, but Fate allowed her mother no such kindness; she was the person who discovered the lifeless body of her first-born. The Palfreys moved to Orlando, Florida, but returned to Charleroi in 1966; this was not a happy homecoming for Deborah, who was bullied so mercilessly she eventually asked for and received her parents’ permission to finish high school in Florida. She earned a degree in criminal justice from Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, then paralegal credentials from a law school in San Diego. But after a few years at this grind she learned what so many women do: that far from being a liberation as many second-wave feminists pretend, a career can be stifling to the point of unendurability. In the ‘80s she became a cocktail waitress, then an escort, but discovered (as I did a decade later) that criminalization allows seedy, sleazy escort services to flourish, and so decided to start her own agency.

In 1990, she was entrapped by a police “sting” operation, but was terrified by the prospect of conviction on the bogus felony charges leveled against her (which included “extortion”) and so fled to Montana, where she was captured in 1992 while trying to cross into Canada. She was returned to California, convicted of “pandering” (i.e. helping whores to advertise) and locked up for 18 months, resulting in a record which ensured she could never again work in the field of her degree. After her release she founded Pamela Martin and Associates, a Washington, D.C. escort service which she ran mostly by phone and email from her home in California. Though she probably figured her long-distance management would protect her, in reality it did the opposite because she underestimated the government’s dedication to wasting huge sums of money and thousands of man-hours on persecuting citizens for having sex. Inspired by the Bush administration’s newly-minted “anti-prostitution policy”, the IRS enlisted the Post Office’s help in “investigating” Pamela Martin; after two years of by-the-book spying failed to turn up anything incriminating they tried to get a warrant to raid her home, but were refused. Undaunted, the Post Office sent a man and woman in October of 2006 to pose as a couple interested in buying Deborah’s house so she would let them in without a warrant, and while they were there they managed to steal enough “evidence” to secure one. Thus armed they raided her house, arrested her and froze all of her assets so she could not hire proper legal representation.

The media vultures descended instantly, branding her the “D.C. Madam” and indulging in the usual orgy of lurid speculation and holier-than-thou pomposity which distinguishes any news story involving commercial sex. This intensified on February 6th, 2007 when Brandy Britton, a former anthropology professor who had worked for the agency and had a number of important clients, was found hanged; Palfrey assumed a brave demeanor but was almost certainly perturbed about the incident, considering that in 1991 she had already described (in the letter to the judge quoted in my epigram) the fate of arrested whores with clients in high places. In an apparent attempt to protect herself she appeared on the TV news show 20/20 on May 4th, 2007 and announced that she had retained almost 15,000 client phone numbers, prompting a deluge of phone calls from clients trying to make arrangements to keep their names secret despite the fact that prosecutors already had their hands on the information. Gambling that full disclosure might help her case and certainly couldn’t expose her to any greater danger, Palfrey and her civil attorney Montgomery Sibley released the phone number database in TIFF format on July 9th, sending CD-ROM copies to hundreds of journalists and activists. Of course, most powerful men make such arrangements by proxy or at least using aliases and private numbers, but three names from her unreleased client list did leak out: Louisiana Senator David Vitter, Global AIDS Coordinator Randall Tobias and military strategist Harlan Ullman (who invented the “shock and awe” concept). The rest of the names were suppressed by judges, but one more was whispered: then-vice president Dick Cheney.

Thirteen escorts and three politically unconnected clients were given the usual choice described by Harvey Silverglate in Three Felonies a Day: go on the stand and lie under oath by repeating the script we write for you, and we’ll let you go; or, refuse to cooperate and we’ll bankrupt you, destroy your family and imprison you for decades. They submitted, sang as directed, and on April 15, 2008 Deborah Palfrey was convicted of money laundering, racketeering and mail fraud (the usual charges government uses to convict people of victimless, consensual “crimes”); she faced a maximum of 55 years in prison, though it’s likely she would have been actually sentenced to about seven or eight years. She never made it that far: two weeks later she was dead, giving the court a convenient excuse to vacate her conviction, thus washing its hands of guilt and ensuring no more important names would be exposed.

Her dramatic death unleashed a tidal wave of speculation. Alex Jones and his Infowars organization pointed out that Palfrey had repeatedly stated in interviews that she would not commit suicide and stated that if she was found dead it would really be murder. Her mother had no signs that she was suicidal, and some handwriting experts claimed that the suicide note was either forged or written under compulsion. Journalist Dan Moldea told Time that Palfrey had told him she would commit suicide before enduring prison again, but Jones pointed out that Moldea has a known history of fabricating quotes. In the end, it doesn’t really matter whether she put the noose around her own neck or it was put there by men in black: it was murder in any case. There is no moral difference between directly executing a victim, inducing her to kill herself by threats against her mother and sister, or driving her to suicide via persecution, robbery, psychological torture and the looming threat of a horrible jailhouse death by rape, torture and disfigurement. “Suicide” has been the preferred method of execution for women who embarrass the rulers of decaying republics since at least Roman times, and the purpose of the kangaroo court which precedes the murder is merely to humiliate the victim, to tantalize her with false hope of acquittal and to allow the sleeping masses the illusion that there is still such a thing as justice.

One Year Ago Today

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36 Responses

If the government pursuing people for using and abusing narcotics is a waste of time, money and most important people, then the government pursuing prostitution between consenting adults is by far more of a waste in that regard. Deborah Jeanne Palfrey was right about her fate and what prisons and jails are like in the USA which is sad to say. May Palfrey rest in peace and be in heaven with God as well as her family and friends find solace.

Same here. When I opened my service I bought a paper shredder, and every time a notebook page filled up with client information (roughly every three days) it went into the shredder. The only exception was of course credit cards, but that’s the nature of the beast.

Because they don’t usually make it clear who they are up front; one generally has to put two and two together, or else they reveal themselves during the call. And at that point it’s in for a penny, in for a pound.

And all to what purpose? No one is deterred, no property is recovered, no mourning relatives or victims are comforted.

Lives are destroyed, in this case literally, and huge amounts of money have been dumped down a black hole, just so that a few people can feel smug and holier than thou, and score a few political points.

I want to second your recommendation of Silverglate’s book. The amount of power federal prosecutors have is simply horrific. They can charge you with “destroying evidence” even if you didn’t know there was an investigation going on (one attorney was charged with this for destroying kiddie porn on a church computer. To not do so would have exposed him to felony possession charges!) And when you combine this with blatantly unconstitutional asset forfeiture laws and the ability to bully businesses into cutting employees loose for individual prosecution, it’s disgraceful.

RIP to Ms. Palfrey who had the temerity to meets the needs of the powerful.

The most blatantly evil power they have is to charge someone with a felony for”lying to investigators”, because “lying” is defined as telling them anything they have decided isn’t true, or that they don’t want to hear.

Lying should never be a crime unless you are under oath. This is especially important because investigators can lie their asses off without consequence (such as, oh, I don’t know, coming into someone’s house pretending to be prospective buyers and ransacking their belongings). That and “obstruction” are catch-alls or “we can’t prove you did something bad, but we’re going to charge you anyway”.

The forfeiture power is almost as evil, though, because, as you noted, it is being used to deprive people of due process of law by denying them lawyers. This power came about because we were couldn’t seize the ships of smugglers because the owners were in England. I don’t think that precedent applies when the alleged criminal is Right. Fricking. There. And given how much this is used against minorities and the powerless, you would think those who supposedly care about minorities and the powerless would be interested.

“And given how much this is used against minorities and the powerless, you would think those who supposedly care about minorities and the powerless would be interested.”

They are. Several politicians generally considered “conservative” and several generally considered “liberal” have spoken about this. Two names which immediately come to mind are Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich.

What a sad, sad story. I’ve never been to the States, though all the Americans I’ve met in Europe have been friendly, sensible, straightforward people. Yet the attitudes you’ve shown here (and in previous posts) make me very reluctant to travel. And even more concerned about the American culture and democracy that the rest of the world is supposed to embrace.

As an American who likes to think others find him friendly, sensible and straightforward (I have to work on that last one, I tend to be nervous on that count), I have my concerns as well. The problem, I think, is that the American people have not faced a challenge that will force them to realize what they’ve allowed to happen through the people they elect and the laws they allow those people to create. Something that will cause those who serve in police forces and the military (who already consider that they have theirs) to see that even they have been ill-served.

Such a thing probably won’t happen until something causes our supermarkets to be bare and/or we have a situation like in the Middle East, a large group of young people who have gotten tired of the whole deal. Given the demographics of the USA (below replacement level), that youth bulge is probably unlikely. Therefore it may be a matter of waiting for the current generation to die out, but before they go they’ll most likely indoctrinate their children into following the same failing policies. So a doomsday scenario where there suddenly isn’t enough food, water or antidote to go round might be the only just solution, something that will recognize no creed, race or income. Because right now there are way too many people with too much time on their hands who all think they have to ‘do something’ whether it’s actually beneficial to their fellow man or not.

I think reading these columns is important to do because of the new perspective it gives, but as just one person, it’s all I can do to get through the day thinking that at some point something will have to give. I wonder if it will be in any of our lifetimes and whether it will be like the fall of the Soviet Union (relatively peaceful) or the French Revolution (an aimlessly nasty bloodbath).

Yes, but there a are a couple things that should greatly depress you! 🙂

The first is – since the dawn of humans a huge percentage of us have always been “pack followers” – and don’t question anything we’re told by the people in charge, as long as we think we’re happy.

The second is – even for “thinking” people like me – all it takes is to provoke a bit of lust for vengeance (such as what happened on 911) and we’re willing to give a whole lot of “trust” to the people in charge until our lust for vengeance is quenched.

That’s two things no one will ever change – except perhaps evolution. The struggles we face are the same exact ones human’s faced at the end of the paleolithic era. The issues change, but the power politics don’t and … they never will. We’ll never reach a state where every man and woman is perfectly “free”.

But – that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. In fact, “trying” may be all that life is about.

Deborah Jean was probably murdered, in the same way that so many witnesses died after JFK’s assassination. You always have to take Alex Jones with a grain of salt, but he is at least partially right more often than he is wrong, although he is often fed misinformation that supports his paranoid/libertarian overview, just as George Norry and Jesse Ventura are. But Alex was the first one to carry the evidence of the CIA memo to the Head of the Secret Service stating Oswald was a CIA operative.
I think Deborah Jean’s persecution and suicide was to sink Spitzer’s political career, just as Chappaquidick sank Ted Kennedy’s.
That and $100 million and we could have a hell of a party.

There’s a lot of proof that Alex “sold out” a long time ago. It’s tragic to me as he started out great. It didn’t last long, unfortunately. He’s dangerous in that he does put out good information but also a lot of ###*** along with fear-mongering. This is the pattern of those in alternative news who are: stooges working for the ###*** in US government (not all in government are ###***) and/or in it only for money/ego reasons. I’m a former fan of his and while it’s been VERY upsetting learning about him and the many others like him in alternative news, I’d rather know that not. There’s very few in alternative news that are REAL but thank God for them! It’s disgusting what happened to Palfrey (I’m convinced she was “suicided”) as it’s disgusting with ALL murder victims.

Incidents such as Ms. Palfrey’s really depress me. I’m a very simple man – not overly intelligent by any stretch of the imagination – I like for things to “resolve” and I Iike them to resolve with the proper outcome. A crime is committed – I like to see the bad guy locked up or put in a hole (about six feet deep).

This one will not resolve.

That said – I have more respect for David Vitter than I do for Alex Jones. Sure does look like a good case for murder but I’ve seen the strangest things in my 50 years of life and who knows what really happened?

Well, in any case – I’m not about to remove misplaced trust in our leaders and then turn around and hand it to the likes of Alex Jones.

What I’d like to know is that when the judiciary are hounding people like this, don’t they ever feel a little…well…embarrassed? I mean, judges, lawyers, they are smart educated people. They must know it is all farcical, and many of them would be clients themselves. Why do they cooperate with the insanity?

I’m all too ready to believe the Dick Cheney part of it, so I’m going to have to force myself to treat it as only a wildly speculative rumor, otherwise I will lose all belief in my ability to at least struggle to remain objective. It really is best to remain as far out of the crosshairs of government attention as one can. Reminds me a bit of one of the themes in the Hunger Games series (the books, that is). Have you read them, Maggie? I know it’s Young Adult fiction, but I really found the way it wrapped it up to be very satisfying and a convincing portrayal of the aftermath of horrific, traumatizing events. In short, I loved the series, which sounds strange for me to hear coming from myself as a middle-aged, adult male academic. Sorry if this is a comment thread hijack.

I first heard of the books when I was doing my “Banned Books Week” column last year, and I did enjoy the movie (which my husband took me to see a few weeks ago). But if I read the books, I’m afraid it will be quite a bit in the future; this blog keeps me so busy my “to read” stack shrinks only very slowly.

I understand. The way I feel about Cheney makes it easy for me to believe anything evil said about him, and I have to remind myself that some evil in this world is done by people not even connected to Cheney.

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